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View Full Version : CHICAGO | Chicago World Trade Center | 2,300 FT / 701 M | 184 FLOORS | NEVER BUILT



ThreeHundred
Apr 11, 2008, 8:33 PM
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/9370/23009ao.gif

All renderings by STR

http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/3006/wtc4.jpg
http://img431.imageshack.us/img431/9305/wtc2.jpg
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/3180/pc-wtc.jpg
http://img431.imageshack.us/img431/3006/wtc4.jpg

There was also a different proposal for the Chicago World Trade Center but I don't know much about it.

http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/5662/bdcwtc.jpg

Xeelee
Apr 11, 2008, 9:32 PM
Nice

M II A II R II K
Apr 12, 2008, 4:12 AM
That would have been so kick ass.

i_am_hydrogen
Apr 12, 2008, 5:00 AM
Chicago has some of the most interesting canceled projects.

7 South Dearborn - 478m (1,567 ft) - 112 fl
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/7694/7sdearbornve2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle - 610m (2,000 ft) - 125 fl
http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/1307/mbskyneedlela4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Project 2000 - 698m (1,968 ft) - 120 fl
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/6875/project200jj8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Wolf Point - 532m (1,745 ft) - 142 fl
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/3672/wolfpointyw2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Dearborn Center - 346m (1,135 ft) - 85 fl
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/302/dearbornctrqa7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

for more, visit: http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/ci/bu/sk/li/?id=101030&bt=7&ht=2&sro=1[/QUOTE]

FrancoRey
Apr 12, 2008, 7:21 PM
Ick. It's tall, but it's a box. Give it more dimension and I'll feel more bad that it wasn't built.

ethereal_reality
Apr 13, 2008, 5:48 PM
http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/3231/2500feetwtcchgoharryweejp2.gif
Chicago World Trade Center

M II A II R II K
Apr 13, 2008, 5:50 PM
And I thought the Sears Tower looked massive to stand under.

ethereal_reality
Apr 13, 2008, 5:52 PM
I posted this in it's own 'mini' thread, but I might as well
include it here with the other Chicago proposals.

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/2396/wolfepointcirculartowerew0.gif
Wolf Point proposal 1963

Austin55
Apr 13, 2008, 6:36 PM
It would have been really sweet if they scaled down the boxy one to about the hight of Sears and put it nextdoor to Sears,so they could contrast and still keep lots of balance in the skyline.

Grumpy
Apr 13, 2008, 7:10 PM
Wolf Point - 532m (1,745 ft) - 142 fl
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/3672/wolfpointyw2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)



Wolf Point and the Trump tower do have so much similarities....
Any chance there will be a tower built on the WP location ??

Alliance
Apr 13, 2008, 10:34 PM
Wolf Point and the Trump tower do have so much similarities....
Any chance there will be a tower built on the WP location ??

Pelli is designing a whole plan. It includes three high-rises containing 850 condominiums, 650 apartments, 350 hotel rooms and about 1 million square feet of office space, anchored by an 89 story likely supertall.

Perhaps more details this summer.

LucasS6
Apr 14, 2008, 2:22 AM
Where was the Chicago WTC supposed to go? In the shot from above it's next to the river. In the shot with Trump in the foreground it doesn't look like it's on the Main Branch, and in the other shots it's clearly east of Sears so it's not on the South Branch. Anyone?

farmer77
Apr 14, 2008, 6:52 AM
I like how it had both height and width, bet it would have blocked out over a dozen streets worth of sunlight. That thing is just massive. None of that cheating antenna/needle stuff either.

kpexpress
Apr 15, 2008, 7:18 AM
Ugly as shiz. I like the 7 South Dearborn though

ethereal_reality
Apr 15, 2008, 5:24 PM
here is a good composite image of 7 South Dearborn.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/2333/7outhdearbornn2bwji8.jpg
unknown artist/photographer

Grumpy
Apr 15, 2008, 6:16 PM
Pelli is designing a whole plan. It includes three high-rises containing 850 condominiums, 650 apartments, 350 hotel rooms and about 1 million square feet of office space, anchored by an 89 story likely supertall.

Perhaps more details this summer.

Great news thank :)

Ducov
Apr 15, 2008, 7:25 PM
Oh god, what a pair of monstrosities, the Miglin Beitler, or 7 South Dearborn, cool, but not the other two.

Soaring_Higher
Apr 21, 2008, 5:01 PM
Where was the Chicago WTC supposed to go? In the shot from above it's next to the river. In the shot with Trump in the foreground it doesn't look like it's on the Main Branch, and in the other shots it's clearly east of Sears so it's not on the South Branch. Anyone?

to me it looks like its on the current 300 North LaSalle site.

STR
May 12, 2008, 2:08 AM
From the Chicago 3D Model thread, here's my dug up history of the WTC.

Tentative timeline for the WTC:

*1980-1981 Stanley Raskow approaches SOM with a propsal to build a 5-6Msqft 1,700 foot tall tower in Chicago.

*1981 Architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer John Zils produce the 181 story bundled tube design shown above. Structural Engineer Fazlur Khan is dissatisfied with using bundled tubes and searches for an alternative. By this time the tower has balloned in size to 10Msqft and 2,300 feet. 2,500 feet was the preffered height by Raskow, but Khan adamantly insisted for a reduction to at most 2,100. They eventually settled on the middle figure.

*1982 Khan invents the telescoping superframe and applies it to the WTC, resulting in the 168 story design on the last page. Raskow announces the tower to the world, but is absent from the unveiling. A representative for a group of financiers is does attend. Raskow insists the project is real and has several backup plans for financing should the main fall through.

*1983-1984 Stanley Raskow suspends work with SOM on the WTC. SOM's fee of $840,000 is unpaid. SOM seeks its debt through legal action. No assets of Stanely Raskow or his company, 300 N LaSalle Development, are found and the commission is never paid. The original financiers had pulled out some time earlier. The underwriter for the project at the time of SOM's termination is found to be a shell of a company that was forced into bankruptcy a year or so earlier after it was found to have committed accounting fraud.

*1984 Stanely Raskow, after being unable to secure his new site near Grant Park, threatens to take his project to Texas. Reprtedly the tower has been brought up to the 2,500 foot figure Raskow wanted.

*1984-1986 Raskow commissions Wesse and Assc. for a new WTC design, based on a structural study Wesse had done earlier. This new design is based on an enhancement of the squared tube (eg. Aon, World Trade Center NY) and stands 2,500 feet tall as Raskow earlier intended. ARTICLE (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=103582)

No information after December 1986 is available.

The last sentence isn't entirely true. A relative of Stanley Raskow contacted me soon after posting my research saying he was alive and well. :tup:

Final version of the Graham/Zils design at correct location.
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/8271/wtc1.th.jpg (http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wtc1.jpg) http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/9305/wtc2.th.jpg (http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wtc2.jpg) http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/4676/wtc5.th.jpg (http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wtc5.jpg)
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/3006/wtc4.th.jpg (http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wtc4.jpg)

It's doesn't look too bad from the postcard shot.
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/3180/pc-wtc.th.jpg (http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pc-wtc.jpg)

Unfortunately, this is what most of Chicago would look at when commuting downtown.
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/7815/jfk-wtc.th.jpg (http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jfk-wtc.jpg)

Next up is the 168 story Graham/Khan design.

http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/107/gk0pm.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Original Plan
http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/5223/orig4ph.gif

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/1739/p12ut.gif

Graham Design
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/9370/23009ao.gif

More info I dragged up
Chicago World Trade Center

Location: Chicago, USA
Original Proposal Date: October 27, 1981
Projected Cost: 1 billion (circa 1981) dollars
Height of Rooftop: 2300 feet
Stories: 184
Height of Highest Occupied Floor: 2280 feet
Status: Unbuilt but possibly revived
Materials: High strength steel
Fascade Material: Gray and black aluminum
Main Architect: Bruce Grahm of SOM
Main Structural Engineer: John Zils of SOM

The Chicago World Trade Center would truly be an amazing building if built. Here are the facts I know about this building so far. The Chicago World Trade Center would stand 2300 feet high with 184 stories. That is more floors than Aesop had fables! It had a bundled tube design, like the sears tower. The Chicago World Trade Center's design is different, though, being a 5x9 tubed design. Each tube is a 45 foot square. Here is how the building is set up. The first three rows are the full 9 tubes wide and rise the complete 184 stories at 2300 feet. The fourth row is 7 tubes wide and rises up to 80 percent the full height, or to the 150th story at 1845 feet...Finally, the fifth and final row is five tubes wide after the first few stories and rises up to 78 percent the full height, or to the 147th story at 1800 feet...The total amount of rentable space within this building (13.5 million square feet) would have exceeded the amount of rentable space within Sears Tower and both of the original New York WTC twin towers combined!

The engineering of the Chicago World Trade Center project began in 1980 and took a little over a year to complete. Tentative plans for the project were formally announced on October 27, 1981. Groundbreaking took place in February 1982. Excavation on the Chicago World Trade Center's foundation was scheduled to begin in April 1982. Completion of the project was scheduled for late 1988. The building would have been open for buisness by 1990.

Here are a couple more fun facts:

The fourth row of the building, which is seven 45 foot tubes wide is a somewhat darker shade of grey than the rest of the building. The architects made the building's colors this way to help enhance it's splendor even more.

The topmost floor of the CWTC would have been a restaurant that would have enabled people to dine at an altitude of 2280 feet above Chicago!

Apparently Mr. Raskow didn't get a warm reception here.
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/7136/dallas1tz.gif

I'm working on the Wesse plan right now. Keep watching this post. There's quite a bit of stuff to look through and I keep turning up a lot of really interesting stuff, like the new quote in my signiture, which is from an interview just a year before his death in 1984. I'm saving all the pdf's and will be able to post higher-res images of everything if needed.

Check this out! A brand new supertall proposal from about the time of the 1970's Boom.
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/4099/projectd0sa.gif

ethereal_reality
May 12, 2008, 11:22 AM
Great research STR !
A couple of the proposals are a complete surprise to me.

Keep researching...it's all very interesting.

Chicagoguy
May 19, 2008, 10:59 PM
So going back to Wolf Pointe, does anyone know why it was cancelled and never built? Also there was a mention of another supertall being built there. Where could I find out more information about that project?

Roadcruiser1
May 16, 2012, 9:37 PM
It is still possible in the future that Chicago will have it's own World Trade Center building. Since it is also an important economic center it is bound to happen.

xXSkyscraperDudeXx
Aug 2, 2012, 4:34 PM
[IMG]http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&newwindow=1&sa=N&tbm=isch&tbnid=iKS0CYBCGJildM:&imgrefurl=http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/GSS/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t31.html&docid=deM0UBWYnfrI0M&imgurl=http://www.chicagoarchitecture.info/Images/NearNorthSide/300NorthLaSalle-001.jpg&w=300&h=424&ei=M6saUMXHDsOO2wXD1IGYBQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=792&vpy=306&dur=4441&hovh=267&hovw=189&tx=53&ty=153&sig=107179747323598369062&page=1&tbnh=159&tbnw=125&start=0&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0,i:88&biw=1280&bih=873[IMG]

At Least We got 300 North LaSalle Tower, Very beautiful Building!

uaarkson
Aug 2, 2012, 4:46 PM
300 N Lasalle is actually my favorite building built in Chicago last decade. :)

chicagoisepic
Aug 10, 2012, 12:04 AM
I dont think chicago will ever have a building taller than sears for a long time. The only reason we did not get these other giants is because there was no demand for them. if the demand ever arises we might see another building taller than sears.

IMBY
Oct 19, 2012, 4:57 AM
With Chicago's super-tall ego, and inferiority complex, don't be surprised to see some of these visionary projects come back to life, in some form or another.

Do you think, for one solitary minute, Chicago is going to take that sitting down, another city in this country building the tallest, when they've had that honor for so long?

Knowing proud windy-citians, it wouldn't surprise me if they voted in an additional sales tax, embraced by all, to finally finish Calatrava's Spire, and use it as an observation lookout, until the units slowly get leased/sold, little by little!

The rest of the country can give the FAA a round of applause for scaling back the proposed 2000 ft tall Stratosphere Tower, here in Las Vegas, back in the 90's, down to 1149 feet! If that had been built, the Spire in Chicago would have been built by now, at 2250 feet!:D

Roadcruiser1
Dec 1, 2012, 9:16 AM
With Chicago's super-tall ego, and inferiority complex, don't be surprised to see some of these visionary projects come back to life, in some form or another.

Do you think, for one solitary minute, Chicago is going to take that sitting down, another city in this country building the tallest, when they've had that honor for so long?

Knowing proud windy-citians, it wouldn't surprise me if they voted in an additional sales tax, embraced by all, to finally finish Calatrava's Spire, and use it as an observation lookout, until the units slowly get leased/sold, little by little!

The rest of the country can give the FAA a round of applause for scaling back the proposed 2000 ft tall Stratosphere Tower, here in Las Vegas, back in the 90's, down to 1149 feet! If that had been built, the Spire in Chicago would have been built by now, at 2250 feet!:D

They can't since the land is foreclosed and the bank owns it now. It's nothing more than a hole in the ground and that is how it will stay until someone buys it.

Chicago_Forever
Dec 1, 2012, 2:17 PM
:previous: IMBY evidently has no clue wtf he's talking about. Chicago doesn't build to compensate for anything. The economy dictates what gets built here, not ego. This isn't Dubai. There are a few buildings here that could easily be supertalls if the developers wanted that. Two Prudential is only 5 ft shy of being a supertall and if the owner/developer cared then all he would have to do is add an extra 5ft on the current spire to make it a supertall.

Anyway, one of the Chicago forumers mentioned about a plan he'd heard or something for the site. He heard it involved another 2000ft tower. I don't know how serious that plan is but I still don't think this is the best site for a 2000 footer.

NYC
Dec 29, 2012, 4:38 AM
Could anyone imagine this with a facade like the Olympic Tower in NYC?
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2058/2219082803_e4d8de4586_z.jpg?zz=1
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beachwalker2007/2219082803/